Alexander: Angels are struggling, but it’s a long summer

ANAHEIM — “I think we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 156 games left,” Angels manager Brad Ausmus deadpanned Thursday afternoon. “So there’s really no need to panic.”

No, there’s no need for panic – yet. Concern, perhaps?

The Angels and their new skipper made it home from a 1-5 road trip. They’d received encouraging news Monday about pitcher Andrew Heaney (maybe throwing within a week), and more potentially encouraging news Thursday when Shohei Ohtani told reporters he thinks he can be back, as a hitter, before the end of this month, rather than the May start date the club has in mind.

And then they played their home opener. Sometimes the narrative just doesn’t cooperate.

Matt Harvey, coming off a gem of a start in Oakland and making his first appearance before the Anaheim faithful, pitched to nine men in the first inning, gave up two home runs and fell behind 5-0. He made it into the fifth and the 90-pitch mark, but his was not a scintillating first impression in the Angels’ 11-4 loss.

To top it off, shortstop Andrelton Simmons – a four-time Gold Glove selection and the best shortstop who hasn’t yet become an All-Star – left after two innings with what was described as tightness in his lower back. He, at least, had an excuse. A lot of others just wanted to get away, since less than half of the announced crowd of 42,027 remained by the seventh inning of a long (3 hours, 49 minutes) and excruciating game.

So what’s it all mean? (Besides, of course, that by game time Friday they’ll be down to 155 games to play?)

It is worth noting that in the most successful season in team history, the 2002 Angels started out 6-14, but ended up with 99 wins, a wild-card berth and ultimately the franchise’s only World Series championship. Since it’s pretty much guaranteed that stat will be trotted out any time the team starts slowly, we might as well be first.

Of course, numbers can be framed to fit any narrative. At 1-6 after Thursday’s loss, the Angels were off to their worst start since 1961, when they were 1-8 as an expansion team. But look at the bright side: They lost last year’s home opener 6-0 to Cleveland … and then came back and won 13-2 the next night.

Harvey pitched six strong innings last Friday in Oakland, leading to suppositions that the Dark Knight, the prince of the city when he was healthy and rolling with the New York Mets, could be a presence at the front of the Angels’ rotation. He still might be. The first impression wasn’t good – 10 hits, eight runs (all earned), two homers surrendered and two hit batters – but Angel fans are a forgiving lot, at least for a while.

(Which is worse: Booing and jeering, or leaving early in droves, as was the case Thursday night?)

“Everything was up” in the zone, Harvey said. “It was one of those where no matter what I threw, they were getting good contact on it … In good starts, you attack down in the zone early in the count, and then you can go up. I just wasn’t able to do that.

“ … I’ll take my 24 hours and be mad about it and then get back to work.”

But his performance after he was traded from the Mets to Cincinnati last summer suggests that being prince of a smaller city works better for him. Orange County isn’t necessarily small, but it’s quiet.

“He played in New York City, which was a pretty big stage and pretty bright light,” Ausmus said, subtly referencing the distractions and temptations of the big city and Harvey’s susceptibility to the same. “But he’s just really another guy. He’s been a model citizen since he’s been here.”

If he’s healthy and productive, he can be a good fit, and a rotation topped by Harvey, Heaney and Tyler Skaggs can be competitive assuming no one gets hurt. (Here, of course, that’s usually a dangerous assumption.)

The dilemma coming off the trip was the Angels’ offense, which scored 13 runs with a .178 team batting average and .481 OPS in six games. The problem wasn’t totally solved in the home opener, but the Angels did get solo home runs from Kole Calhoun and Mike Trout, after the team managed just one home run (from Calhoun) in the first six games. They got enough other runners on base to strand 11 and hit into two inning-ending double plays.

Baby steps.

“We’re battlin’, all of us,” said Trout, who smoked his first homer of the year in the third (110.8 mph exit velocity, 422 feet to dead center) and almost matched that speed with his throw home (96 mph) to nail Ronald Guzman in the top of that inning. “Had a lot of good at-bats, hit the ball hard, just had our chances to score runs but fell short.”

Trout then reminded everyone that although there’s a new guy making out the lineup, Mike Scioscia’s influence lives on in the form of one of his favorite clichés.

“We’ll turn the page and try to win the game tomorrow,” he said.

In other words, there’s a long way to go.

jalexander@scng.com

@Jim_Alexander on Twitter

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